


on all the ashes in my wake

by artemine



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Angst, Character Study, i can't help you just read and find out it's 2am i'm just angsty, i think, is this even angst., to be honest i don't really know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 15:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6014452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemine/pseuds/artemine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you forget how the story goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on all the ashes in my wake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figure8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/gifts).



> listen to this as you read to get the full experience: http://8tracks.com/thismighthurt/artificial-nocturne. this isn't even my mix  
> title from arsonist's lullabye - hozier (but my peace has always depended / on all the ashes in my wake)

            Sometimes you forget how the story goes.

 

 _The gun goes off._ The bullet goes fast, faster than you would have thought it would, and everything is a blur until it’s not. There’s blood everywhere, blood on your suit as your knees hit the ground, blood on your hands as you try to press on your mother’s wound hard enough that it will stop spilling, blood on your face and hair when you realize there’s nothing you can do and you have to hold yourself to stay alive. Blood in your eyes, stinging from the burning tears. Red everywhere. The man with the gun looks back at you when you turn to him, and he hesitates for a second before running away, leaving you voiceless, shaking and gasping like a fish out of water. Later, they tell you you’re alive because that guy probably couldn’t shoot a kid. You don’t understand the logic behind it. You don’t understand how they can’t see that he shot you in the heart just as effectively as he shot your parents. You don’t understand when they tell you that you’re being strong. You would have rather died there. In a way, you did. With the bullet you didn’t take lodged inside your heart, you fill the hole in your chest with anger, blazing, furious, holy rage, until it burns you entirely and you can become something more. Something else. Something ugly, dark and twisted, that doesn’t look like you, that rises dreadfully from the ashes, scary and merciless. _As long as I don’t have to be me_ , you think.

 

            _The car spins._ You don’t see much. You’re 11, and you’re coming home from a simple trip to the movies with your parents, and suddenly you’re upside down. Your belt snaps, and you feel something pull you back, protecting you, keeping you pinned to one side of the car. It’s your father, sticking you there so you won’t hit every seat and snap your neck. The car finally comes to a stop. So does your mother’s brain and your father’s heart and Alfred’s body. When he turned the limo at the corner, it collided with a truck driver that fell asleep driving, sending your ride tumbling down the road, crashing into two other cars and a girl on a motorcycle, who dies on the spot. When you crawl out of the wreck, alone and bloody, limping from a broken ankle, the city is very silent. You can’t feel your body when they put you in the ambulance. You wake up weeks later, orphaned and with no one else to take care of you. They send you away. You learn about family of your mother’s in England. They tell you that running away from Gotham is what’s best for you. You never come back. You don’t know what else to do, so you wipe everything out of your memory out of sheer force of will, refusing to even read any news that would remind you of the city you used to imagine your future in. Hell, you even take up an English accent without noticing. You don’t read about the other tragedies, you never go to the circus, you forgot where exactly in the city your family died, you sell the manor and take up your wife’s last name. You don’t have children. One day, you hear about the earthquake that hurt Gotham City beyond saving. Everyone living there died out. No redemption for ghosts and demons. Nothing to save. _Good riddance,_ you think.

 

            _The curtains go up in flames._ It spreads from here, and it doesn’t stop. The manor is old, and it’s mostly composed of woods, and even though you told your father _thousands_ of time that it was time to renovate what could be renovated, he never did. He hardly will get a chance to, now. He dies in his sleep, chocking in the smoke. Later, you’ll have plenty of time to think about whether or not he woke up before he died, whether or not he was conscious, whether or not he knew you were the one that accidentally started the fire, playing with lighters. Your mother isn’t found until a few days later. She was in the library, as she often was late at night, and the ceiling collapsed on her. They only found parts. You manage to warn Alfred in time, and you both watch the manor go up in flames. The grass under your feet tickles your skin, cold and strange in the heat of the flames. The guilt devours you quicker than the fire ever could. An exact year later, even after everyone said it was just a teenager’s mistake, even after the multiple trips to a guilt counselor, even after promising Alfred you knew he wasn’t mad at you, an exact year later, they find ashes on your shoulder. They don’t need to wonder where it comes from. The hole in which they can see through your head is clear enough. So is the blood on the ground, and the bullet on the floor. _I bet mom didn’t even know dad kept a gun_ is your last thought.

 

            _The plane collides with the ground_. A flash, and nothing. Your parents held your hands the entire way down. You don’t have time to think.

 

              _The rope snaps_. You hear your father yell for the first time in your life, and it’s also the last time you hear his voice at all. He breaks his neck on the way down, bounces ridiculously on the walls of the cave. The bats you were so terrified of he had to come and get you fly away and you swear you can hear them laughing. It takes Alfred two hours to find you both, two hours you spend sitting on the ground, your back damp from touching the wet walls of the cave, barely blinking, staring at your father’s corpse, the rope twisted around his legs. When they pull you both out, your see your mother cry for the first time, but not the last. She’s mad at you, she doesn’t want to but she’s mad at you and she spends months locked in her room, mourning the husband that was taken away from her too soon and too unfairly. It feels like you killed both your parents. It’s in the news everywhere. You live on, because that’s what seems like the right thing to do. You’re angry. Furious, even. You do stupid shit because it’s fun, and because you’ve ruined too many things to care about details. There’s nothing worse you could do than what’s already done, so you allow yourself to do plenty of things. There’s always someone to dare you to do something, to push yourself a bit further. You gamble with yourself, testing your limits, pushing them around, betting with the voice in your head on how far you can go. Your wealth slips between your fingers, wasted on whatever you can get your hands on that will dull the pain and enhance everything else. You never take the seat at Wayne Enterprises that belongs to you. You don’t know what it is they even do. When you become too old to party, and when people tire of you, you realize how alone you are. You spend your days and nights inside, your mom grows older, Alfred grows more tired, you grow harder, meaner, angrier. Your heart feels like it’s not really beating inside your chest anymore. You watch the news and you find it ironic that you live in the age of heroes. You wish you could fly, like that guy with the cape. You picture yourself free to go wherever, spending hours hiding behind clouds, and there’s a bitter aftertaste in your mouth. _Maybe if my father had been Superman he wouldn’t have died,_ you think. _Maybe if I had been Superman, I wouldn’t have been so scared,_ you think. _Superman doesn’t even need to fly,_ you think. _Why couldn’t my father fucking fly,_ you think.

 

            _She closes her eyes one last time._ Your father passed away years ago, and you hold your mother’s hand as she joins him. It was my painless, they tell you. It’s life, and you were ready for it. You braced yourself, you didn’t let it crack you open too wide. You have to go to work the next week, because that’s what the Waynes do, they’re strong, they endure, they don’t let predictable things like death touch them more than necessary. They plan ahead and get ready for any impact. You’re an adult now, and even if you weren’t, your father taught you early on that death was a part of life. He was a doctor, he knew about these things. Still, it stings a little when they take her away and you realize there’s only you now. The house is weirdly empty. You never gave them grandchildren. Wealth and the power of your position in the family business attracted many people, but never long enough to stay. That’s all you want, really, a family, that’s what you’ve always wanted, but now your parents will never meet your future kids. You’ll get them, eventually, you just need to find the right girl for it. It’s complicated and exhausting, what you want, but you really want it. You know your father was a bit disappointed to die with no heir to the Wayne name but you, no signs that the blood line would go on. There’s time. You’re in good health, you’re going to die old, your doctors tell you. Still. You hear about a kid orphaned in weird circumstances in a circus. _The world ain’t fucking fair,_ you think.

 

            _The gun goes off._ It always goes off. Of that you’re sure. Of the rest, it depends on the day. The questions are always the same. Were your father wearing a tie or a bowtie? Was your mother in red or white heels? You tried to capture the scene perfectly when you left the alley, feeling you would need to remember it as the last time you were _you_. Did you or did you not scream? Your dead parents on the ground, the precise image you can conjure of the time a stranger stole everything you had and made you into something you never wanted to be. Did you or did you not want to be this? You’re always wondering. When going home, late at night or early in the morning, running through rooftops, you often make the same list, terrified that maybe you should have went with any other possible scenario but the one you followed. Were you or were you not destined to this? Watching your parents get shot again doesn’t get old. The scene is still in high definition years later. Did you or did you not make something good out of it? You think about all the orphans that don’t have your money, and you think about your first son, and you know _this,_ this at least was good. Did you or did you not turn your biggest weakness into your biggest strength? You think of how something inside you got stuck years ago, how the bullets in your parents’ chest hurt you more than them, because you had to live with the damage they entailed. You think of how the pain never stops and how you can’t help but spread it and you think of all the hurt you caused because you let people know the person behind the cowl – you let people know _you_. Did you or did you not deserve that kind of salvation? You think of a scrawny brunet swearing as he put tires back on a car. Did you or did you not sent a kid you desperately wanted to save to his death? You think of the pain of that, too, and whether or not it was worth it. He comes back and you know it was. You’re not sure he thinks so, but you’re sure he doesn’t have regrets. You and him don’t share that. You share anger and justice and the strong ability to make something good out of a bad situation. Did you or did you not make your city a better place? _Yes,_ you think. Did you or did you not transform the worst in you into something salvageable? _Yes,_ you think. Did you or did you not make the sweat and blood and tears and ache worth something? _Yes,_ you think. Did you or did you not die in that alley, and built yourself a life back up from scratch? _Yes,_ you think. You focus on the little voice next to you, jumping around and talking about patrol. He has your eyes, and your determination, and your strength, and some of your pain, too. It’s obvious to anyone with common sense that he’s yours. That he’s family. _Yes,_ you think.


End file.
